TIES

Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management

MIT Sloan's Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management (TIES) Group represents a group of scholars and practitioners with a shared interest in understanding the challenges of innovation—moving ideas from the earliest stages of basic research to effective products and services with an impact on the world. Within this broad set of interests our community explores the factors that enable effective production of basic research, the role of entrepreneurship and strategy in bringing ideas into the market, and the strategic challenges faced by large organizations as they strive to remain at the innovation frontier. Work in the group also explores the conditions that ensure that innovation and entrepreneurship is effective in driving economic and social impact at the local, regional, and national level; including the design of programs such as innovation contests, startup accelerators, etc., in developed as well as developing nations.

Our group embraces scholarship on these topics from multiple disciplinary perspectives (including economics, sociology, and engineering) and using a diverse set of research methodologies (including historical case studies, large-sample econometric analyses, and ethnography). Examples of recent topics tackled by TIES faculty range from the adoption of digital currencies and block chain, to the measurement of growth-oriented entrepreneurship, the effects of public R&D funding on the productivity of private-sector firms, the governance and design of multi-sided platforms, social status as a source of competitive advantage, and the foundations of entrepreneurial strategy. The industry being studied are similarly diverse, such as the biopharmaceutical sector, clean energy startups, or traditional capital-intensive industries undergoing the effects of digitization.

In addition to creating new sources of data and doing research, our faculty teach and mentor students throughout MIT. Within Sloan, our group has primary responsibility for the curriculum of the MBA program’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Track, the core competitive strategy courses in the MBA and Executive MBA programs, as well as the “Innovation-driven Advantage” course in the Sloan Fellows program. Beyond Sloan, we are heavily involved in the undergraduate minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, including the Venture Engineering class offered in conjunction with colleagues from the MIT School of Engineering. Members in the group also take a leading role in the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, the MIT Innovation Initiative, and many other groups and programs across the MIT campus with an entrepreneurship or innovation focus.

Rigorous, discipline-based research is the hallmark of the MIT Sloan PhD Program. Ph.D. students in the TIES group are scholars who will soon lead in their fields of research—those with outstanding intellectual skills who will carry forward productive research on the complex technological issues that characterize an increasingly competitive and challenging business world.

TIES 50th Anniversary

In 2011, MIT Sloan’s Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management group marked its 50th anniversary. The group celebrated by hosting “Innovating the Way We Innovate: The MIT Technology, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship and Strategy Group 50th Anniversary Research Conference and Doctoral Consortium.”

This forward-looking event focused on research frontiers in the management of technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, and strategy. The program also examined the symbiotic relationship between MIT as a science and engineering research enterprise and its leadership in research and teaching in the strategic management of science, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

“Innovating the Way We Innovate” featured luminaries from the MIT and MIT Sloan faculty and prestigious educational institutions from across the globe. The program included sessions considering topics such as the MIT approach to innovation management and entrepreneurship; new frontiers in the strategic management of science, innovation, and entrepreneurship; and new directions in innovation.

The TIES Group is built on a tradition of research and teaching that began in 1961 with the foundation of the Management of Technology program. The program was dedicated to identifying the best ways to organize research enterprises and commercialize new discoveries and technologies. The TIES group has carried on this proud tradition with its unflinching support and commitment to advancing innovation and its strategic management to the best advantage of new products and solutions.

The Mission

The mission of the MIT Sloan School of Management is to develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world and to generate ideas that advance management practice.